Hydrogen-based economy

You know what would go perfect with this? An entire lane for just rubber (Oil-->Rubber) and an entire lane just for plastics (Oil-->Plastics). Just standalone lanes that produce a ton of each resource.

@Brzydal I could do it, but I don't see the point, since my current setup has many initial flaws — I'd approach it differently now.

@iifetap It's possible to make such bp later :) But right now I'm busy with another big project - Mega Oil Power Plant 300 MW https://imgur.com/a/TU33NPu

i like the oil and hydrogen backup power plants! very easy and compact

@Pestplatte Thanks! By the way, I also converted the hydrogen plant into a coal to dispose of the excess sulfur by exchanging it for coal.

is it updated to u4?

As far as I know, oil refining recipes didn’t change in Update 4, so everything should still work fine.

ooh...i saw that the blueprint was updated so got curious...now that i look at it my question seems dumb af...what was the changed in the update though?

I updated the description to make it clearer — for example, the cost of buying oil for gold via contracts and selling diesel for gold.

This might be against the spirit of this build, but I think there might be some utility in building some overflow protection on the Fertilizer II lanes for the Fuel Cell, Plastic/Rubber Cell, and Diesel Cells. The primary goal of these are Hydrogen, Plastic/Rubber, and Diesel production respectively, and you may not have the economy needed to utilize all of the Fertilizer II by the time you're ready to implement these cells. I retrofitted mine to output sulfur (which can either be used for other processes outside the hydrogen economy or slagged, as needs dictate) and flare excess ammonia from the Sour Water (but not the synthetic ammonia from the hydrogen. The point being to protect my fuel infrastructure, which is reliant on the hydrogen produced and cannot be allowed to stall. There are vastly more productive uses for these resources, but until someone is ready to implement those (farms, contracts--I'm sure once I bring the medical cell online I won't be able to get enough sugar cane), security and reliability outweigh efficiency. If using the whole pig means you starve because you fill up on pig bones and have no room for the meat, toss the bones.

Yes, this implementation of ammonia flaring does contradict the core idea of this economy, which is to use all resources as efficiently as possible. However, it is included in the combined Fuel Cell with plastic and rubber as an emergency option — for example, in the event of a limestone shortage — to prevent the production of these resources from stalling. Under normal conditions, excess fertilizer is always handled by increasing its use in greenhouses up to 140%, with the resulting increase in grain yield then utilized through the BioSoil Hydrogen Cell to produce additional hydrogen. Alternatively, in a simpler setup, the grain can be directly converted into biodiesel for trading gold.

At the early stage, if you don’t yet have this infrastructure in place, you can mostly rely on the combined fuel cells, or alternatively retrofit the basic cell with an ammonia overflow electrolyzer as a temporary solution. When I originally developed the basic cell, I had not yet accounted for various critical scenarios involving shortages or overproduction of certain resources, which is why that system is not included there. It is not always practical to account for every possible scenario and redundancy setup, as doing so can significantly increase system complexity. Any setup will always involve certain trade-offs in order to achieve its main goals while maintaining compactness and avoiding unnecessary complexity, and so on. For example, I find it easier to build additional fertilizer storage rather than temporarily complicating the cell.

Ultimately, such high-productivity agriculture gives this economy the ability — through trading food packs — to transition to electricity generation using oil power plants, effectively making them renewable.

@Warmachine And in general, the Hydrogen Fuel Cell can be easily upgraded for self-regulating fertilizer production. You simply replace the Chemical Plant used for synthesizing additional ammonia with an Ammonia Electrolyzer. This is a more resource-efficient solution than flaring ammonia.

There are all the necessary options for connecting pipes using balancers, including an ammonia input and a nitrogen output. The balancer should, of course, prioritize supplying ammonia to fertilizer production, but if fertilizer storage becomes full, the excess ammonia will be sent to the electrolyzer, where it is decomposed to produce hydrogen. If there is interest in such upgraded, self-balanced basic cell, I can add its blueprint as well. But personally, I find it more convenient and efficient to utilize sulfur for fertilizer production. Similarly, it’s not difficult to upgrade the Diesel Cell and redirect the produced hydrogen into diesel production.

https://imgur.com/a/peTX1Jk